This past Tuesday, January 21, Brentwood’s JV basketball team faced Valley Park. They unfortunately lost but the team put up a good fight with a final score of 43-50, making the team’s current record 4 wins and 3 losses.
Shooting guard, freshman Bartu Alanoglu, finds these close games both exciting and nerve-wracking because when there are a couple of minutes left and the team can’t make any mistakes. He also mentioned that he is glad that there have been a lot of fans coming to watch the game and feels motivated by it. As for Tuesday’s game, he felt that the team played fairly well but could’ve made some better decisions. “We could have had fewer turnovers. We should be slowing down,” he said. In total Alanoglu scored ten points in the JV game, including two 3-pointers. According to Coach Sappington, so far this season, Alanoglu is leading the team in assists with an average of 3 per game.
In addition to Alanoglu, the other starters at Tuesday’s game were Xavier Declama (9) as point guard, Deresun Mccaskill (9) as center, Johannes Mortsiefer (11) as a power forward, and Cole Flynn (10) as small forward.
As the team’s center, Mccaskill (9) had a lot of rebounds in Tuesday’s game — he currently leads his team in rebounds with an average of 9 per game. According to Mccaskill, the team’s strategy to win games and have fun is just to “go out there and play” he said.
Mccaskill has good chemistry with Alanoglu and Declama because they have been playing together for 3 years. McCaskill says he is quite new to playing basketball since he started in 6th grade. “Basketball is not my main sport” Mccaskill said, acknowledging that there are things he still hopes to keep improving on.
Want to catch some more BHS basketball? Come out tomorrow, Friday January 24th to see Brentwood’s varsity girls and boys team play against Hancock at 4:30 and 6 p.m.
